Will people talk in 40 years about the 2022 heatwave like we talk about 1976?

Chris Hallam (Image: Chris Hallam)

Do you remember 1976? When a gallon of petrol cost 77p and a loaf of bread could be bought for 18p? Do you remember when the Olympic Games were held in Montreal or when Brotherhood of Man came first in the Eurovision Song Contest?

If you are aged fifty or above, chances are you will remember at least some of these things. But when most Britons remember 1976, they remember the weather. It was the longest, hottest summer on record.

Strictly speaking, it has been hotter since. At the time of writing, the highest ever recorded UK temperature has been 40.3 °C (104.5 °F) achieved during the recent heatwave on July 19 2022 i.e. last month.

Perhaps surprisingly, not one of the ten hottest days in the UK occurred during the year 1976. Only one (from 1911) occurred earlier while four of the top five hottest ever days all occurred within the last five years.

The year 1976 was undeniably something special, however, simply because the summer heat endured for so long. On June 28, the temperature in the south of England hit 32.2°C (90°F) and stayed that way for two weeks.

Most people assumed it wouldn’t last and enjoyed it while they could. But the heatwave lasted throughout the summer. Wimbledon was won by Bjorn Borg and Chris Evert that year.

Observers noticed that umpires struggled to stay awake in the sun while male spectators stripped down to their waists.

Before long, the heat started causing problems. The AA was kept busy as 1,500 car engines overheated in London.

In Elstree, where the film Star Wars was being filmed, the British actor Peter Mayhew who played Chewbacca collapsed from heat exhaustion on set. By mid-July, less than a tenth of an inch of rain had fallen in a month.

When a light drizzle fell during a cricket match at Lords, the crowd erupted in applause.

But the heatwave was not over. The grass was brown. Crops and flowers died. Birds flew away.

Fires started breaking out. Dorset experienced heath and forest fires on a daily basis. In Ferndown, for example, fire swept through 250 acres of woodland.

A nearby hospital was forced to evacuate all its patients. In Hurn Forest, an inferno consumed 50,000 trees. South Wales was hit harder by the weather than anyone else. Parts of the south-west of England, meanwhile, went 45 days without any rain in July and August. Food prices rose by 12 per cent as a result of all the crops lost.

In August, a Drought Act was passed and Prime Minister Jim Callaghan appointed the popular Sports Minister, Denis Howell as ‘Minster for Drought.’ “The flowers are going to have to wilt and cars will have to remain dirty,” Howell reflected.

He was soon dubbed ‘Mr Rainmaker.’ Howell advised people to put a brick in the toilet cistern and not to fill their baths more than five inches deep.

In a revelatory moment, he explained that he would be sharing baths with his wife, Brenda, for the foreseeable future. Howell urged people to report on their neighbours if they saw them using too much water. T-shirts started appearing bearing the slogan, “save water, bath with a friend.’ Water supplies were deliberately shut for long periods on a daily basis in some areas.

Eventually, of course, it all ended. The highest recorded temperature in 1976 was 35.9°C (96.6 °F), then second only to 1911.

The 1976 heatwave is thought to have resulted in around 20% more deaths than usual.

Will people in 2068 one day talk of the 2022 heatwave as people in 2022 still talk of 1976? It seems unlikely.

The long hot summer of 1976 was at the time, very unusual. As the impact of climate change continues to be felt, in the 21st century, hotter and hotter summers seem to be becoming the norm.

As of July 2022, seven of the ten highest recorded UK temperatures have occurred in the 21st century. 2022 is thus less likely to linger in people’s memories in the way 1976 has.